Facing an almost $4 million cut in their budget, officials with the Mississippi Department of Health are scrambling to find ways to mitigate the potential damage to the services it provides.
One area to be affected is the department’s restaurant inspection program.
“Historically high-performing restaurants may see a decline in inspections,” said Liz Sharlot, MDOH communications director.
Sharlot said those restaurants may be inspected once or twice during the year. Previously, they were inspected three or four times annually.
There could also be a reduction in the aid provided by MDOH for site inspections for new restaurants, a void the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association hopes to fill.
“That’s something we are looking into,” said MHRA Director Michael Cashion. “We may be able to do some of the original reviews of site plans, which is something (MDOH) helped out with. We want to do anything that we can to mitigate the time challenges that new restaurants face.”
Neither Sharlot nor Cashion expect the deep budget cuts — 11 percent of the total budget — to create a public health issue because of the reduced number of restaurant inspection.
In 2015, MDOH conducted 24,349 inspections. To date this year, it has performed 14,140 inspections.
In the Golden Triangle, four restaurants have been given “C” citations, which is defined as critical violations that are being corrected — two in West Point and one each in Starkville and Columbus.
Sharlot said the inspections of restaurants who have a history of poor ratings will not see a reduction in inspections.
“We are not looking at this as Armageddon,” said Cashion, whose organization represents 1,500 restaurant owners. “Our understanding is that the restaurants who had bad ratings will be inspected as often as they were before. So we don’t see this is a threat to public health.”
The approach to closely monitoring poorly performing restaurants won’t change, Sharlot said.
“Those that perform poorly will be inspected as many times as needed to ensure the protection of the public. The system has always been risk-based, and inspections are conducted accordingly,” she said.
Sharlot said MDOH had already made some cuts to its staffing, eliminating 19 inspectors in February and restructuring the deployment of its inspectors by assigning them to north, central and south zones, which cuts down on the costs of travel.
“No additional cuts to staffing have been made based on this budget,” Sharlot said.
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Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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